Of Elves and Tieflings: The Paladin and the Barbarian.

These costumes/characters were meant to be part of a larger group shoot, for various reasons I had to scrap that shoot. Since these costumes were done I felt it was the best option to just go ahead with a shoot with just these two characters. There was a couple false starts and minor changes, but eventually it happened.

One aspect of the shoot that might never have been was The Tavern series. I just came up with it the day before the actual shoot, so had we been able to go earlier this wouldn't have happened and it's given me ideas for future shoots.

I plotted out ideas for the rest of the shoot like any other, but this time around I went really heavy on the colour grading in post processing to give it a more film-ic look.

Overall, I'm happy with how it all turned out. It was a massive amount of work getting the costumes done, but it's a process I'm really starting to enjoy and I'm building up quite a wardrobe that'll allow for less planned shoots to happen quickly. For those that don't know, very little of these costumes are store bought items, most of what you're seeing is all hand made by myself. Aside from things like gloves, some boots and definitely armor and weapons, I've made (and created the patterns as well for most) all this stuff.

I'm particularly happy with how the shield turned out, especially considering how cheap it was to make. I did have most of the materials already onhand, so it wasn't free, but there was very little new things purchased just for this. The main part is the actual circle of wood - I had expected I'd be buying some lumber, measuring and cutting - instead I actually found this at Michael's for only $10 so it made the process so much easier to tackle.

Fans of Vikings will definitely recognize the design.